To Reduce Traffic Deaths, Austin Envisions Ending Homelessness

Robert Lormond stands on the corner of Ben White and Manchaca watching his friend, Jerry, as he's detained by police for jaywalking.

Miguel Gutierrez Jr./KUT News

This story is part of our series, The Road to Zero, which explores traffic deaths and injuries in Austin and the city's plan to prevent them.

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Robert Lormond is standing on the corner of Ben White and Manchaca watching his friend, Jerry. Two police officers have stopped him.

“I called him across the street. I didn’t see a police officer and he jaywalked," Lormond says.

There are crosswalks on three of the four sides of this intersection, but Jerry cut across the road—the one side without a crosswalk and that's illegal.

Robert Lormond, who is experiencing homelessness, stands at Ben White and Manchaca. He says he almost gets hit by a car daily.

Credit Miguel Gutierrez Jr./ KUT News

“That’s ridiculous," Lormond says, motioning to the one part of the intersection without a crosswalk. "Why wouldn’t they have a crosswalk crossing a major intersection? This does not make any sense at all."

Lormond is homeless, and, like many living on the streets in Austin, he spends his days on the corner of a busy intersection asking drivers for money.

Lormond says he often has near misses with cars.

"I was crossing the street," Lormond says, recounting one near miss earlier that morning. "I had the walk signal and a guy almost ran over my foot. He looked right at me and didn't even slow down."

“I’ve been hit by two cars," says Waco, another man experiencing homelessness in Austin. You can ususally find Waco sitting on a street corner off of Riverside Drive. He wouldn’t tell us his real name, but everyone knows him as Waco.

Waco, a man experiencing homelessness, who was standing near Riverside Dr. says he has been hit by two cars in Austin.

Credit Miguel Gutierrez Jr./ KUT News

“The first time, I was in the wrong," Waco says. "Second time, I was right."

Waco says the first crash was at William Cannon Dr. and Bluff Springs Rd.. He was trying to catch the bus and cut between two parked buses. He didn't see a car driving by. The car hit him, throwing him onto the sidewalk. Waco says the second time he got hit was at Woodward St. and the I-35 frontage road. It was dark out.

"My light was green," Waco says. "The car was coming up the access road. Hit me so hard I flew up in the air, when I came down I was in the middle of the street. And when I came down it knocked me out.”

Last year, 102 people were killed on Austin's roads, a record number of traffic fatalities in the city. 30 people were fatally hit by cars. More than a third of those people were experiencing homelessness, according to Austin Police.

"We tend to push our individuals experiencing homelessness to sort of undesirable locations that's often on a high speed road."

"We tend to push our individuals experiencing homelessness to sort of undesirable locations that's often on a high speed road," says Francis Reilly, a planner for the city of Austin and one of the leaders behind the city’s Vision Zero plan—a set of recommendations to reduce traffic fatalities in the city by 2025.

“They don’t often have vehicles," Reilly says. "They’re relying on transit and a lot of walking. Especially since they’re walking along high speed roadways you increase their risk exposure.”

Austin police say most of the time, the homeless person is considered at fault in these crashes because they crossed mid-block, which is a failure to yield to traffic, or they were drinking or on drugs. Plus, most of these crashes happen at night.

But Reilly says it’s more complicated than that.

“People who are camping maybe further out from city center and trying to catch a bus to get downtown may cross mid-block and run into traffic," Reilly says. “It’s easy to say that this is a mistake on the part of that person, but if they don’t make that bus, they don’t get services.”

In 2015, 30 pedestrians were fatally hit by cars on Austin's roads. Many of them were homeless. The city's Vision Zero plan includes reducing homelessness by 2025.

Credit Miguel Gutierrez Jr./ KUT News

To curb this trend, the city's Vision Zero plan includes goals to end homelessness entirely in Austin by 2025. The city wants to pursue Housing First models, the idea that housing is the first step to provide stability for those living on the streets. The plan also recommends reducing the number of homeless persons being seriously hurt or killed in traffic by 25% per year. Ann Howard is the executive Director of ECHO—the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition. Howard says more housing keeps more people off the street at night.

“We want to constantly have our eye on ending the homelessness, not sort of managing it by, ‘How do we keep the folks under the bridge safe,’" Howard says. "I don’t want people under the bridge!”

In fact, Howard says she’d like to see the city end homelessness earlier than 2025.

Meanwhile, Austin police are looking for other ways to reduce pedestrian fatalities near high-speed roads. One idea is to make it illegal for people to stand on medians and shoulders near high-speed roadways.

“I don’t think any citizen or anyone would think hanging out by high speed intersections is safe behavior."

But the vast majority of the pedestrian fatalities involving a homeless person happened at night, when there are few people panhandling. So it’s not clear how many deaths would be prevented by this proposal.

“A lot of times as the night goes on, we find a lot of impairment, and of course, darkness! Darkness is your enemy," Fortune says.

David Gomez is with Austin Integral Care, which connects with and provides services to people experiencing homelessness in Austin. He’s driving a mini van around the city to camps where homeless people live: under bridges, behind strip malls or grocery stores. Gomez says he and his team try to address safety when they visit the camps.

“There’s been discussion around when we go out to give away some of these reflective vests and you see a lot of guys wearing those when they’re trying to clean windshields," Gomez says.

Austin Police Officers arrest a man experiencing homelessness on Ben White and Manchaca. He was detained for jaywalking, but arrested for outstanding warrant for multiple tickets, including soliciting in a roadway and camping in public.

Credit Miguel Gutierrez Jr./ KUT News

Gomez brought along a bunch of zip-loc bags in his car stuffed with toiletries to hand out called hygiene kits. He says Integral Care has considered including reflective tape in those bags, too. Gomez says when someone living in one of these camps is hit by a car, he and his team sometimes offer emotional support to their friends.

“Sometimes, sadly, when tragedy happens, it’s when people get motivated to change their lives," Gomez says. "And it’s beneficial when we know where they are and they know who we are and what we have to offer.”

Back on Ben White, Robert Lormond watches his friend, Jerry, get arrested.

He had a warrant out for a variety of tickets: soliciting in a roadway, camping in public, walking in the roadway, drinking alcohol within 1,000 feet of a school.

“We have nowhere to go," Lormond says. "Where we going to go? Go to the Arch where they all smoke crack and do everything else and sleep outside and hope to get a bed and sleep during the day? There ain’t nothing out here to help us.”

Related Content

This is the first story in our series, The Road to Zero, which explores traffic deaths and injuries in Austin and the city's plan to prevent them.

One hundred and two people died on Austin’s roads in 2015 - the most ever recorded. More than 20 have met a similar fate so far this year. Nearly every death involved a car. Yet, in a city where 93 percent of households own a car, Francis Reilly does not. Reilly works in the city's planning office.

The Austin Police Department has some ideas how reducing pedestrian traffic fatalities in the new year, some of which they shared with the city’s Public Safety Commission Monday night.

In 2015, more than 100 people died on Austin’s roads. That’s nearly double the number of traffic fatalities the year before. Roughly one-third of those deaths in 2015 involved a pedestrian, which is why APD is considering ways it can make more unsafe pedestrian behavior illegal.